Rebecca Moynihan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. The Labour Party will support this legislation today, as we continue to support Government efforts to tackle the pandemic. However, the virus is already tearing through the country, tearing through schools and tearing through this building. It is difficult to get a PCR test. Proper ventilation still is not part of our response. It seems to me that mandatory hotel quarantine is focused on travellers so that the Government can pretend it is doing something, while not addressing the underlying issues, such as proper ventilation for what is an airborne virus.

It is worth noting that a vital part of our policy response to Covid-19 should be access to vaccines and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, TRIPS, waiver. As we come to yet another Christmas that looks as though it will be overshadowed by this virus, it is worth reflecting on the season of giving, of empathy and of generosity. We must do more to get much-needed vaccines to the people who need them all over the world. This is the only way that we can stop new variants emerging. We must do this together. We must help each other to achieve widespread vaccination everywhere. Until this happens, no country is safe and no person is safe. By the same token, we cannot operate mandatory hotel quarantine, as we did during the summer, by essentially by directing it towards the states in the global south, without ever properly acknowledging that virus numbers are soaring in the countries of our nearest neighbours. That is not a policy approach that targets the countries where the virus is out of control. It targets countries which are politically convenient to stigmatise.

On Wednesday, we saw announcements from the Department of Justice introducing new visa requirements for passport holders from South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Lesotho as part of the response to new variants. This is the case regardless of whether people have actually been in these countries. It is apparent that the issue is that they have passports from these countries. That is not a response that is based on science. We know that the Omicron variant has already been found in countries across the world, across Europe and is in Ireland itself. It seems to me that African countries are being targeted specifically because they have been ahead in sequencing and in identifying the virus, rather than simply that the variant comes from that African country. It is already spreading here. Punishing passport holders from the countries that had the scientific capability to identify the variant in the first place is neither how we keep people safe nor how we encourage countries to be able to properly sequence the virus. If we are going down the road of mandatory hotel quarantine again, it must be supported by proper suppression measures domestically. That includes, but is not limited to, a properly rolled-out subsidised and informed antigen testing regime. It is looking more and more like this will not be our last winter with Covid-19. We are going to have to start making long-term plans and stop acting as if this were a wave of the virus that will be our last. We need to plan it effectively for the long term. Mandatory hotel quarantine is not a long-term or comprehensive solution.

While we are supporting this Bill today, we have also tabled amendments. I sincerely hope that the Government Members of the Seanad depart from the actions of their colleagues yesterday and that they will support the Labour Party's amendment that explicitly allows those who travel abroad for time-sensitive medical reasons and come back to Ireland - I specifically mention abortions - to be exempt from mandatory hotel quarantine and testing requirements. I have asked the Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, in this House and he has refused to confirm in this House that abortions are exempt from that situation. We know that women have been turned away from aeroplanes. I also heard of a situation yesterday from the Abortion Support Network, which operates in England, that a woman had to go into isolation for ten days. She was stuck in the UK, adding to the expense of her travel, because she failed a PCR test. We have tried to explicitly state this, yet the Minister for Health has said that this will be dealt with in regulations. However, we are 18 months into this virus response and the Minister for Health and the Department of Health have refused to explicitly state that. We know the situation on the ground is that women are extremely panicked about getting tests where they have to go for an abortion within a 72-hour time period.This will now be a 48-hour time period. Our amendment is reasonable and it is shameful the Government voted it down last night.